Posted on 02/21/2020 12:38:49 PM PST by Theoria
The Trump administration plans to allow 45,000 additional seasonal guest workers to return to the U.S. this summer, the highest number since the president took office, according to three administration officials.
The Department of Homeland Security plans to announce the additional seasonal-worker visas next week, an administration official said. They will become available in two waves: the first 20,000 will be immediately available, while employers can apply for the remainder for jobs beginning June 1.
It wasn’t clear whether the White House has fully signed off on the numbers, and an administration official cautioned they could change.
The additional visas are being made available ahead of the summer, when demand for short-term work is typically highest.
Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf “has made no decision yet on the issue,” a DHS spokesperson said. “Any numbers reported on at this time are being pushed to press by junior staff who are not privy to all of the discussions taking place.”
The seasonal worker program, known as the H-2B visa program, enables U.S. employers to hire as many as 66,000 foreign workers a year, with the allotments split evenly between the winter and summer seasons. Congress permits the Department of Homeland Security each year to raise that cap by as many as 64,000 additional visas.
In Mr. Trump’s first two years in office, DHS raised the cap by 15,000 visas to 81,000, and last year it raised the cap by 30,000 to 96,000.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
“You didn’t put it in quotes , thus making it seem like it was your words . Not someone else’s.
Yes making someone take a seasonal job is akin to a communist work camp.
Seems you would understand that with so much in dem brains you got.”
Too funny - and pathetic - it didn’t need quotes because it was my own words as an observation of the fact that with FReedom, we can’t force folks to work jobs they don’t want to work - which is what would be required if they didn’t import seasonal workers.
If you ain’t smart enough to figure that out because it collides with your “sensibilities”, then there’s no sense in arguing further.
This is the analysis I was refering to:
"Using their figures and those from https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/05/22/u-s-fertility-rate-explained/ I conclude that an increase in the tax value of the personal exemption of $130 would (all else held equal) get us at least back to replacement level, and $525 at least back to our 1960-ish peak."
It's not yours? It's clearly not theirs.
You've said we can greatly increase the birthrate of native Americans and I'm just looking for something to back that up.
Yeah, they've bounced around 1% GDP growth.
I'm not saying it's the end of the world but our whole fiscal structure is built on the expectation of at least twice that.
Without a growing population you're pretty much limited to the rate of productivity growth, which hasn't been that high.
This is the analysis I was refering to:
"Using their figures and those from https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/05/22/u-s-fertility-rate-explained/ I conclude that an increase in the tax value of the personal exemption of $130 would (all else held equal) get us at least back to replacement level, and $525 at least back to our 1960-ish peak."
Then your original question was ill-posed; what I posted is not a multivariate analysis, but a simple arithmetic application of the paper's multivariate analysis to a few data points culled from the Pew link.
If you'd like to admit you're in over your head here and have me to walk you through the arithmetic, I can do that.
How so - what would be the fiscal consequences of 1% GDP growth?
I'm sure your math is tight - your problem is what's happening in the real world.
Since the publication of the Whittington, Alm and and Peters paper we've had 20 years of experience. Despite significantly increased tax incentives for childbearing the fertility rate declined.
You say their findings weren't implemented but we had the creation of a $500 child tax credit in 1997 which was increased to $1000 in 2009.
As one research paper reviewing the original study asked,
"If a $100 increase in annual child tax benefits could increase fertility by 3.2 to 6.5 percent, should we have expected a 32 to 65 percent increase in the US fertility rate in response to the $1,000 Child Tax Credit, holding all other factors constant?
By the way, that paper analyzes an additional 20 years of data and goes on to conclude that the original paper doesn't really hold up. As they said:
"We find evidence that child tax benefits increase fertility with a two-year lag. However, the total short-run effect is not statistically different from zero. These results suggest that tax benefits do not affect the overall level of fertility, but are consistent with an effect on the timing of fertility.
I'd also ask you to reflect on the ramifications of your own math. Your analysis posits that a $10/month net increase in income is going to cause some significant number of people to have children who otherwise wouldn't. Does that really give you the confidence to say we can greatly increase the birth rate via tax policy?
Huge revenue shortfalls and massively growing debt and deficits.
Consider that the President's current budget proposal has unrealistic spending cuts and an assumed GDP growth rate of 3% and still doesn't come into balance until 2035.
"Modest" immigration would be a huge step in the right direction - currently it's running at an immodest 1M+ per year.
"If a $100 increase in annual child tax benefits could increase fertility by 3.2 to 6.5 percent, should we have expected a 32 to 65 percent increase in the US fertility rate in response to the $1,000 Child Tax Credit, holding all other factors constant?
It wasn't a rhetorical question - and note carefully that last clause: "holding all other factors constant." Whittington, Alm and and Peters said fertility rate depended on annual child tax benefits AND several other factors; changes in those other factors could easily reduce or cancel the effect of increased annual child tax benefits.
By the way, that paper analyzes an additional 20 years of data and goes on to conclude that the original paper doesn't really hold up.
They also note other studies whose results were in line with Whittington, Alm and and Peters, and conclude a "lack of agreement in the literature" while not claiming to themselves be the last word.
It looks like my statement that "We can make it [greatly increasing the birth rate of native Americans] happen" through an increase in annual child tax benefits was too strong; the jury is out. But I never meant to imply that such an increase is ALL we'd need to do ... and an increase in annual child tax benefits is a good in its own right anyway; if there aren't more kids, then there are more child-raising resources at parents' disposal. I certainly don't accept that the only answer is to admit millions coming in search of a handout, or a job they're only pretending to be qualified for.
Your analysis posits that a $10/month net increase in income is going to cause some significant number of people to have children who otherwise wouldn't. Does that really give you the confidence to say we can greatly increase the birth rate via tax policy?
Of course - why wouldn't it?
As has been said on this thread, "I'm not ready to give up yet."
Because a child tax credit that was almost 10 times larger didn't seem to budge it.
Whittington, Alm and and Peters said fertility rate depended on annual child tax benefits AND several other factors; changes in those other factors could easily reduce or cancel the effect of increased annual child tax benefits.
And did those "other factors" just happen to spike in 1997 and 2009 to offset the $500 increases in child tax credit those years?
By their prediction we should have seen a very noticeable bump up in fertility rate following both increases, but we didn't.
I'm not trying to be argumentative but affluent societies have fewer children. Governments have tried lots of things to counteract this trend without success. I think it's naive to expect a few hundred dollars a year per family to reverse what seems pretty inexorable.
I agree.
But the greater catastrophe is to import millions of marginally productive foreign laborers every year for the sole purpose of increasing domestic demand and paying into the Social Security Ponzi scheme.
Even the Asian Indians - who are America's best educated and highest paid ethnic group - are mostly just less expensive replacements for “average” American-born engineers (with some obvious and stellar exceptions, of course).
And, the fact that Asian Indian Americans voted 80% to reelect Obama in 2012, and 77% to elect Hillary in 2016, should be completely unacceptable to American Conservatives.
Bottom Line...
America is ungovernable and almost insolvent.
Massive legal and illegal immigration simply adds gasoline to the fire.
Possibly they did - do you have evidence to the contrary?
By their prediction we should have seen a very noticeable bump up in fertility rate following both increases
You still don't understand multivariate functions; I've explained it so many times even the cows get it by now.
Even the Asian Indians - who are America's best educated and highest paid ethnic group - are mostly just less expensive replacements for “average” American-born engineers (with some obvious and stellar exceptions, of course).
And, the fact that Asian Indian Americans voted 80% to reelect Obama in 2012, and 77% to elect Hillary in 2016, should be completely unacceptable to American Conservatives.
Amen!
You haven't expended one word explaining it. At least not to me.
Rather, you've invoked it as a talisman to ward off the obvious reality that modest changes in tax policy aren't enough to counter the declining fertility rate.
Rather, you've invoked it as a talisman
That's your innumeracy at work. This also is not my problem.
Where did I restrict myself to such? If an increase in the tax value of the personal exemption of 50 dollars will increase the general fertility rate by 6 to 12 births per 1000 women, then an increase in the tax value of the personal exemption of, say, 300 dollars will increase the general fertility rate by 36 to 72 births per 1000 women.
Big if.
In the 20 years since that study we've implemented child tax credits that in constant dollars are more than 20 times that size. The fertility rate has continued to decline.
Leaving aside the fact that subsequent analysis casts real doubt on that study's findings, what good is a model that's proven it can't survive contact with the real world?
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